arefully edited by the Government official),
money which could be exchanged at Bulun Store for raw leaf-tobacco.
After this discovery, things went much better. I was allowed a little
tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent
in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle,
with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber
in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but
with skins and a couple of lamps I did not do so badly.

"One day I had a letter stealthily conveyed to me from Big Peter, to say
that he and Leof were resolved on escaping. They had a boat, he said,
concealed about eight miles up the Lena under some willows on a stagnant
backwater. They intended to try for the north as soon as the water
opened, and hoped then to go towards the west and Wrangell Island, where
they felt pretty sure of being picked up by American sealers by the
month of August or September.

"This letter stirred all my soul. I did not believe rightly in their
chance. It is seldom, I knew, that whalers come that way, or enter far
through the Straits of Behring. Still, undoubtedly, a few did so every
year. It was worth risking, any way, for any kind of action was better
than that ghastly wearing out of body and fatty degeneration of soul.
One or two more letters passed, stimulated by the tobacco-money, and the
day of rendezvous was fixed.

"Leof and Big Peter were to make their own way down the river, hiding by
day and travelling by night. I was to go straight across country and
meet them at the tail of the sixth island above Bulun. So, very
quietly, I made my preparations, and laid in a store of frozen meat and
fish, together with a fish-spear, which I _cached_ due south of my
Yoort, never by any chance allowing myself to take a walk towards the
north, the direction in which I would finally endeavour to escape. It
was very lonely, for I had no one to consult, and no friend to whom to
intrust any part of my arrangements. But the suspicion of the Yakuts was
now very considerably allayed, for, said they, he is now well fed. A dog
in good condition does not go far from home to hunt. He will therefore
stay. They knew something about dogs, for they tried their hunting
condition by running a finger up and down the spine sharply. If that
member was not cut, the dog was in good condition.

"At last, in the dusk of a night in early summer, when the mosq